Trimming Down

I'm feeling the need to take a break from my regularly scheduled series of recipe after recipe. So bear with me as I ramble a little :)

Now, "Trimming Down" might seem like an appropriate conversation topic around the holidays and the plethora of food that always seems to be available (see above comment about the backlog of recipes that I need to post); however, I'm not quite daring enough to cross into the weight-loss discussion. Rather, I'm realizing that I need to trim down on some of the superficial "things" in my life: clothing (ironic since I have two packages of online purchases coming to my house this week...baby steps), keepsakes (we won't talk about the number of boxes I have in our basement compared to Darrell)....and even slightly less tangible things like lists. Yes, lists. I am queen of making lists, and usually awful at following through on them. Last year I was addicted to quite a few "foodie" blogs, and was bookmarking so many recipes to try that I finally just made a GoogleDocs document where I could list their hyperlinks and organize them by type (and make them searchable by main ingredients and whatnot--yes, nerd alert right here). Well--the list grew and grew. I think it maxed out at nearly eleven pages. We have actually utilized the document a handful of times, and some of the recipes have even made it off the GoogleDocs document and into our permanent collection... But. Eleven pages is A LOT.

So, I've started going back through the recipes. I'm realizing that there are a lot of recipes that I initially bookmarked because I liked the idea of them (like eggplant parmesan), even though they are realistically not dishes that Darrell and I would ever decide that we were in the mood to cook. And really, if we were ever in the mood for them, I'd probably just do a Google Search for a recipe. I began the thinning out process earlier this week, and I've already cut out a page and a half of recipes. As well as stumble across quite a few that I want to put on our menu for next week. Of course, the largest majority of those recipes that I have bookmarked are dessert recipes, and I haven't even begun to sift through those. All in due time though...all in due time.

Maybe I'll start trimming down my "to read" list next.... I won't even mention how many hundreds of books are on that list.